Unceremoniously
by Mind of the Childishly Naive
Summary: The August heat is bearing down on Odaiba with a vengeance, and the cooling unit in the Kamiya's apartment complex has unfortunately decided to take a permanent vacation. / 2005ish?


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Unceremoniously

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The August heat is bearing down on Odaiba with a vengeance, and the cooling unit in the Kamiya's apartment complex has unfortunately decided to take a permanent vacation. It started it's death rattle as soon as the temperature began to climb shortly after nine this morning and gave out entirely just before midday, when the heat and humidity had reached their peak, with an exhausted groan that filled Kari with sympathy and a soft sputter of luke-warm air that only sent her brother into a fit of despair. It refused to be resuscitated, no matter how much Tai begged it or beat the side of it with his fist. After several attempts, he gave up and Yuuko called someone to see about fixing it.

That was well over an hour ago.

The curtains have all been drawn, casting the apartment into semi-darkness in an attempt to preserve some of the cool and stave off the bright, smothering rays of the high afternoon sun. Tai, for his part, has resolved to beat the heat the only other way he knows how - by stripping down to his thinnest shorts, and moving as little as humanly possible. Presently, he is slumped back on the couch, damp with sweat from head to toe and the breathing definition of lethargic, his hair wilder than usual from where he's run his fingers through it, trying to push it up off his neck, and face, and any part of him that it doesn't _absolutely have to _touch. He's tied it up with one of Kari's pink barrettes.

He looks ridiculous.

Kari has decided not to tell him this. After all, the heat makes you do silly things.

She can't comment on Tai's appearance when she's wearing one of his enormous, worn-out T-shirts that was unceremoniously turned into a tank-top two summers ago. She can't recall what possessed him to tear the sleeves off and widen the arm-holes so dramatically - she's privately convinced it's a boy thing - but she's not one to complain. The motorized fan hums at them pleasantly from the coffee table, the breeze pushing in around Kari's drawn up legs, cooling her exposed sides and billowing the large shirt around her small frame.

She's sitting on the floor between Tai's spread knees, so they're both in the direct flow of cool air without having to squabble over it. She would win in a fight and that's not very fair to Tai, whose dignity has suffered enough for one day - though that isn't to say she doesn't regret this particular arrangement. When Tai moves his legs - _again_, shifting his feet across the carpet in search of a slightly cooler spot - the inside of his thigh sticks to Kari's bare shoulder and she grimaces.

With a disgruntled noise, she shoves at both his knees and they swing limply away from her.

"Can you please be still," she asks in despair, "You're so restless - can't you be still for three minutes?"

Behind her, Tai's groggy voice remains somewhat indignant, "I think I'm starting to fuse with this couch at a molecular level and you want me to be still."

"At least you'll be comfortable," Kari says, looping her arms around her knees.

She keeps her eyes closed, head tipped back into the cool air pushing her hair back from her face. Their mother pipes up from the kitchen, leaning against the counter in front of another small fan and sounding as miserable as her children, "Are you kids hungry? We need to eat _something_ but I don't even want to _think _about turning this stove on..." Tai and Kari voice their mutual dismay at the idea by groaning. At least it seems as if they're more put-off by the prospect of additional heat than any attempts their mother would make at a decent meal.

"I'm too hot to be hungry," Kari admits, resting her chin on her knees.

"What we need is some ice cream or popsicles or something," Tai says, ever the forward thinker. He moves his leg, purposefully bumping Kari in the shoulder again, "Hey - Kari, why don't you run down to the mart?"

"Why don't you go?"

"Because then I'd have to get dressed."

"You call this dressed? I look like a homeless person."

"Hey, those are my clothes you're wearing, what're you tryin'a say?"

"One of you please go, I think I'm having a heat stroke," Yuuko says, putting a quick end to the half-hearted bickering and fanning herself with a magazine.

Kari hums noncommittally, head tipping to one side.

Tai takes the initiative.

He wraps his legs around his sister, squeezing her head between his knees. Kari thrashes - _"UGH! Tai! You're sweaty!"_ - but she has to roll forward to get away from him, practically climbing over the coffee table, knocking aside the fan, to escape his stupidly long legs and invasive, prodding feet. She turns, glaring at him, hair mussed from the assault. Tai grins at her around his defensively raised knees, his feet off the floor.

"Hey, now that you're up, how about going to the market for us?"

When Kari raises her fist at him, he flinches, laughing, his hands jumping up. Deciding she's too good to resort to such tactics, Kari lowers her fist and lifts her chin.

"I'm not getting you anything," she says, head tipped demurely as she rounds the coffee table, keeping well out of his sweaty reach.

She swings her arms behind her back, fingers laced together, and with Tai relaxing, watching her warily, Kari presses her foot down on the fan's electrical cord and yanks it free of the wall. The buzzing sputters to a halt, the breeze going with it, and Tai lets out a groan of disbelief, sagging further into the couch - if that's at all possible - as his sister saunters across to the kitchenette. Kari leans against the counter, "Momma, where's your purse?"

"It's by the phone, sweetie." Yuuko points weakly with the magazine, her eyes half-closed. "I want some orange sherbert, please, if they've got any." She pauses, turning her head to watch Kari while she digs through the purse, then slips her feet into her sandals, wallet in hand. "Aren't you going to change before you go?"

"No," Kari says over her shoulder, pulling open the door, "I'll be back."

The door clicks shut on Tai's loud demand for a carton of Rocky Road - and for a while there is the lonely buzzing of Yuuko's fan, the crumpled noise of the magazine as she waves it back and forth, and Tai's disgruntled moaning as he shifts around on the couch, uncomfortable and sticky and left alone in the heat. The moment passes quickly, and Tai bolts upright.

"Wait a minute, she didn't really go out in that shirt, did she?!"

Yuuko raises her head to look at him, "Of course she did, why - ?" but Tai is already scrambling up and over the back of the couch. A cushion flops to the floor and, in a similar - though far less graceful - fashion, so does Tai, nearly smashing his face on the hardwood and swearing as he struggles to right himself. He stumbles to the door. Yuuko admonishes him for the foul language, but he runs right out of the apartment without hearing a word of it, some threadbare shorts away from being nude and showing a lot more skin than the little sister he's so concerned about, barefooted and yelping at the hot concrete on the balcony.

Sighing, Yuuko slumps in front of the fan and wonders if she should have called after him about putting on some sunscreen.

He always burns before he tans.

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(A/n) Not much to say~ Me and me sister finally watched the first season of Digimon and I'm catching the writing bug as we creep up toward NaNo, so I figured I'd try and get some of the Kamiya siblings out of my system before succumbing to the novel I need to finish this year! I haven't written and actually FINISHED anything in what feels like forever, so goddamn this felt amazing! English names because that's how I was raised! Reviews are appreciated~

-Motcn


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